zekesonxxIt filters out 90% of your keywords, and when it doesn't the results aren't always right!
Preventing overusage is not the same as making it almost useless.
For example: search.php?t=144678a

> end rant
Rant ended....

Also, I'm a web developer. I post on here to try and find people who need websites and make them. Why can't I just search "website" instead of having to wade through the many, many posts that aren't website related?

Pretty often at my job I'm asked questions about indexing (for the application I support) and ZaphodX is 100% correct in his response.

If members were able to search terribly common words, it would most likely cause site-wide degradation and impact overall performance for other users.

Every-time you search (query), the website has to look through every record in order to pull back a result. Eliminating the ability to search for these helps keep the site more stable and functioning properly.

Then again, I'm not sure of the hardware running behind PMC so it's just a guess. =p

From what I've heard, most forum search options are terrible.

I know were your coming from, it has to be 3 words and if theres to meny results you carnt search.

Allowing people to search incredibly common terms would cause excessive database searches that would un-necessarily load the site.

However, yes searching for something you want to find is pretty irritating. Google is often a better choice.